


"SUPER": The Unusual Suspects

by beetle



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Bad Good Guy, Cognitive Dissonance, Conspiracy, Crack Treated Seriously, Dark Crack, Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, F/M, Fascism, Gay Male Character, Gay Sex, Good Bad Guy, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Terrorism, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, Lesbian Character, Lesbian Character of Color, Lesbian Sex, M/M, Mentor/Sidekick, Multi, Parody, Satire, Sidekicks, Superheroes, Superpowers, Supervillains, Terrorism, Weird Superhero Names, World Domination
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 06:46:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8738845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: A send-up of superhero and supervillain comics, movies, television shows, and books. In which damn-near everyone is LGBTQIA, some people are non-binary, and a few people aren't even from Earth.'Ware the tags. If the story, which is WIP, takes a turn, I'll note in tags and in chapter notes before the story. Okay? Okay.Shall we, then?





	1. Prologue & Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Some **SUPER** fun facts:
> 
>  **Alter:** The alter-egos of heroes, and the villains who loathe them.  
>  **Antis (i.e. “Antiheroes,” “Antivillains”):** (Super)Heroes or (Super)Villains with unusual moral codes or moduses operandi.  
>  **CGJ:** The Coalition of Great Justice … think of it as the SuperFriends, or JLA, only autocratic and rather merciless.  
>  **eX:** Meteor fragments or radiation as it applies to terrestrial animals, especially humans.  
>  **Extra-Norms (eX-Norms):** Humans who’ve been enhanced by exposure to meteor radiation.  
>  **GodTech Industries:** The ubiquitous catchall Corporation, somewhat like Wayne Enterprises, with hints of Umbrella Corporation.  
>  **Harkman Sanitarium for the Criminally Unsound:** The Arkham Asylum of the story. An island prison-slash-mental institution. Not a nice place.  
>  **Hero:** A person, usually costumed to protect their alter-ego or secret identity, who commits acts of altruism or heroism. This person differs from a Superhero only in a lack of measurable superpowers.  
>  **Original(s):** One of the first so-called “Superheroes” or “Supervillains” to emerge on the scene after the advent of the eX-meteor.  
>  **Superhero:** A Hero with superpowers (an eX-Norm).  
>  **Supervillain:** A Villain with superpowers (an eX-Norm).  
>  **Villain:** A person, usually costumed to protect their alter-ego or secret identity, who commits acts of greed or villainy. This person differs from a Supervillain only in a lack of measurable superpowers.

** **

* * *

Prologue

 

It was 8:17 a.m. in Metro City and all was flux and flurry. Rush hour was still in effect for at least another hour though, in a few more minutes, it would be at its apex.

Far above and slightly to the west of the usual madding crowd that filled and milled about GodPlaza and its subway station—and the GodTower, itself, of a morning—the Green Knight, a.k.a.  _Alban Jakob Efros_ , perched on his sloped vantage-point and waited.

They knew patience, of course, both knight and nebbish. The Green Knight and his alter knew when to _wait_ and—at the correct moment—when to _strike_.

 _Like ants_ , Alban thought with more sadness than disdain. Because,  _like_  a hill of ants near a schoolyard, those people were about to be stepped on.

“At least ants in a hill die free. These people will all die slaves. All of them,” the Green Knight muttered as his shield quietly whirred and hummed. The perimeter was clear, for yards in any direction, of all life signs save two. “Like a child’s ant farm left forgotten on a windowsill in the sun.”

 _Except the child’s_ carelessness _causes death. Our_ intent _is to kill. Intent is the difference between innocence and guilt. Manslaughter and murder_ , was Alban’s reply.

The man had always been annoyingly hesitant. Alban Efros and his squeamish lack of conviction had long-since earned the Green Knight’s contempt a thousand-fold.  _Intent doesn’t matter. Only end results matter._

Alban shifted within their shared head-space.  _Spoken like a true fanatic._

The Green Knight hissed under his breath then scowled at the sudden chuckle from over his left shoulder.

“I like you a lot better when you’re not behind me, you know,” he told his literal partner-in-crime. The other laughed outright, now, rich and genuinely amused.

“You don’t like me  _at all_ , Efros,” was the calm-voiced reply. Their partner clearly had no qualms about the murder of tens of thousands of people, drones though they may have been. “Nor yourself, very much, or so it appears.”

“Don’t fucking psychoanalyze us,” the Green Knight said coldly, unaware of his slip—even the shrinks at Harkman didn’t know that the Green Knight and Alban Efros were two separate personalities in one contested body—until it was too late. But the other didn’t seem to notice, merely snorting and hunkering down next to the discontented villain, bringing the scents of juniper and . . . shoe polish. “We had enough of that in Harkman, thanks to you and your compatriots.”

“You were a public menace.  _Still are_. But the good of the many,  _et cetera_ ,” the other said rather casually. Even the Green Knight shuddered. Alban actually quailed.

“You know, for a member of the CGJ, the greatest and most  _just_  tribunal ever to exist on this planet . . . you sure are fucking _soulless_.”

“Since when does _justice_ require a _soul_?”

To this, the Green Knight had no reply. Though Alban Efros had  _several_. And most of the words had five or fewer letters and one syllable.

 _Are we really going to do the bidding of this fucking monster?_  Alban demanded urgently.  _Those are_ people _down there. And_ in _there. One of whom actually_ means something _to us—_

 _To_  you.

 _To_ us, Alban corrected the Green Knight with unusual firmness.  _At this, the hour of our death, let there be no lies or illusions between us. At last. We_ love _her . . . we have since Harkman. We could kill her a thousand times—ten thousand—and we would never love her or ache for her less. Only_ more _._

The Green Knight hung his helmed head and the other’s hand landed on his shoulder . . . not in compassion or commiseration, but in warning.

“Don’t have second thoughts _now_ , Efros. I’m counting on you to get this done for me. For the  _world_.”

“You don’t give a flying fart in space about the world,” the Green Knight and Alban both said, their voice strong and hard with a conviction it hadn’t held since before Harkman. Before their will had been broken—shattered, like cracked quartz under a determined boot.

The hand on the Green Knight’s shoulder loosened for a few moments, before tightening.

“That’s neither here nor there, as far as  _you’re_  concerned. Just do as we’ve agreed, and everything’ll come up roses.”

“Not for those poor assholes down there.”

“But for everyone else? A new world starts in less than five minutes. A  _better_  world. The destiny of humanity will be changed.  _Righted_.”

The Green Knight snorted mockingly and that hand tightened further.

“ _Don’t_  screw me over, Efros, or you and the two people you love will spend the rest of their  _very_  long lives paying for your betrayal. I’ll make sure of it.”

Both the Green Knight and his alter went cold. Because the maniac about to have him kill a significant portion of the city couldn’t know about  _the child_  . . . right? Couldn’t possibly know about  _him_?

Not when even _she_ didn’t know.

“ _Oh, yes,_  Alban. I know. All about her, of course, and the baby, too. You’re not the only one with dirt on Propheteer.” Another chuckle, this one bright, like moonlight winking off a straight-razor. “I’ll make certain you _and_  they both live long enough to  _gag_  on the suffering your lives will encompass.  _You and she_  will spend the rest of your days in Harkman Max-Sec: You on the Agonizer, and she as Mentallo’s plaything. And  _he_  . . . well . . . I’ll do my best to ensure that  _his_  childhood makes yours look like  _The Sound of Music_. Defy me, if you dare, but don’t imagine that I won’t strike out at you in every way I possibly can.”

The Green Knight swallowed, then licked dry lips. “If I do what you want, they’ll die, anyway.”

“A better death than she’s  _earned_. A better death than the one  _I_  have planned for her,  _otherwise_. And certainly better than the death we all face at the hands of your precious _Doomsday_.” The significant pause ended on a cold, breathless whisper that was without inflection or pity. “And when you’ve followed-through on my plan . . . when the time comes for me to silence you . . . perhaps you’ll see her again. Perhaps you’ll  _both_  be together in Hell.”

“I don’t believe in an afterlife,” the Green Knight said simply, shrugging the hand off his shoulder. “Let’s get this over with so you can put me out of my misery and unfurl your evil plan, eh?”

Another eerie, heartless chuckle . . . as if they were two pals about to go bowling, and not a revered superhero and washed-up, former-supervillain joining forces to break the world.

No,  _shatter_  it, and rebuild it in one fascist psychopath’s twisted image of peace and justice.

Said psychopath was still chuckling, still amused. “ _This’s_ why I picked you, Efros: You’re a man after my own heart.”

“You don’t have one,” Alban came forward to note softly, desolately, and the Green Knight let his alter have his say. It’d be Alban’s last chance to do so—their _last_   _words_. And they were fitting ones, if a  _non sequitur_  without plenty of context.

“Have at, sir,” the other said, gesturing grandly and patting the Green Knight’s armored back.

The Green Knight sneered . . . then he locked his visor’s faceplate in place. He leapt onto his giant, green anti-grav sled-cum-shield, which hovered patiently a few feet away, and engaged the mag-levs to lock his boots to the device.

Now that it was down to the wire, he lingered a few feet above the water tower on which he and the other had been crouched.

 _This is wrong,_ Alban moaned softly, desperately. _There is no end that will_ ever _justify these means._ Nothing _can justify what we’re about to do. This is pointless genocide._

His face stone-stoic behind its covering of alloy-plating, the Green Knight snorted.

 _The point, Alban, is that_ her _death will be quick. Hers_ and _the child’s. It’ll be quick, and probably painless. It’s the_ best _you can offer them, at this point. The best_ we _can offer them. And if there_ is _an afterlife, perhaps we’ll get to see them there. Though I wouldn’t get my hopes up that she and the child will wind up in the same afterlife we do. Not after what_ we’re _about to do._

Sighing, Alban wordlessly agreed and, with minute shifts of their booted feet, the Green Knight and his alter guided the shield- _cum_ -sled away from the water tower.

A few moments later, that empty, heroic, _heartless_ laugh was following them out over the crowded GodPlaza and down to the busy front entrance of the GodTower.

It wasn’t long after  _that_  that the screaming began.

#

 

 

****Chapter 1** **

 

Halfway between my bathroom and kitchenette I froze.

There was a bouquet of lushly red flowers on my coffee table. Their scent had been with me while I showered, and I’d wondered at it, thinking that for once, leaving the window cracked for so-called “fresh air” was a good idea. Now. . . .

The window was closed and I hadn't closed it.

“Good eveneeng,  _Mademoiselle_  Casey.”

I started violently then kicked myself. Of  _course_  I’d know that voice—that  _accent_  anywhere. It’s dogged me, haunted me for the past six years like a poltergeist, from one end of sanity to the other. And who else would call me by  _that_ name, after all this time?

The Stranger, of course.

Stepping out of the shadows of the narrow kitchen entryway was a grey-clad specter that seemed to glow in the soft lamplight. Always a dramatic entrance—but less dramatic than I'd thought it would be when he, or some other hero, finally twigged to the connection between Alban and me.

Though with the way things’d been going lately, my money had been on one of the Upstarts—like Cheshire Kat or Rakshasa—digging back deep enough through Alban’s dirt to find little old me, rather than any of the Coalition of Great Justice finally putting the puzzle pieces together.

(The Coalition tended to bludgeon their way to Justice, these days. They certainly didn’t have time for little nothings like “deductive reasoning” or “investigation.”)

I smoothed my damp curls, and straightened my bathrobe like it was armor gone askew—any port in a storm, I suppose—and forced a pleasant smile onto my face. I wished I still had my mask. Granted, my mask had been stupid, tacky, showy, and uncomfortable. Not to mention destroyed a long time ago. But I wished I had it . . . not for the first time, either, though I’d never dared to make another. I’d had more than my share of Harkman Sanitorium’s hospitality for one lifetime.

“The Stranger,” I purred with as much whiskey and irony as I was capable of. I felt like the mouse that roared, but all I wanted to do was arm off the flop-sweat my face was suddenly covered in. I wished I was wearing something a little more imposing than a red flannel bathrobe and flip-flops. “Long time, no see. Shame it couldn’t be longer.”

“I can understan’ why you might feel that way. ‘Ow ‘ave you been?” he asked, stepping into the light, each step like a chess move: planned, deliberate. That’s what made this one so damned dangerous. I mean, he probably wasn't as smart as that egomaniac, Solid State (who’s really not as brilliant as he likes to think, never mind what the local rags claim).

The Stranger was definitely not ridiculous-fast, like Blue Blazes and the Lightning Lass—or as strong as The Impossibly Strong Dude. And I was pretty sure he wasn't as impervious to injury as Tartan Hombre, despite there being no reliable, corroborated stats on the extent of the Hombre’s indestructability. “I’m . . . surviving. And you?”

He quirked a tiny grin that was more sardonic than mirthful. “The same. More or less,” he added softly, almost inaudibly, and I shivered. If my life were a novel, this would have been considered  _foreshadowing_ , and I wondered if he had a foot in some other reality, (rather, one foot in  _this_  reality) like Necromancer, or The ReAnimator, or Propheteer. The Stranger was one of the few whose active powers—assuming he had any, besides a  _seemingly_  preternatural instinct for knowing where shit is about to go down, and the useful ability to think his way out of a good, old-fashioned Doomsday Scenario better than most—were mostly undocumented. Many people doubted that other than the average eX-Norm’s strength and relative invulnerability, he had any.

Maybe that was so. But he was definitely a thinker, one of the last of that rare breed of eX-Norm that put brawn to the service of brain, and not the other way around. . . .

Dark, melancholy eyes ticked back to mine, and the grin acquired hints of bitterness.

As if, after everything,  _he_  had a right to be bitter!

His grey-gloved hand drifted to one of the two infamous black utility belts he wore crisscrossed around his hips like a gunslinger, and I took a step back. Pointless, really. When The Stranger made up his mind that someone needed dealing with, they were as good as dealt. Just ask L’Estraga. (Oh, wait, you  _can’t_. She’s been mind-wiped, and incarcerated in a titanium-glass prison with electromagnetic binds and spirit-wards . . . just in case Necromancer decided to break in for some well-deserved revenge.)

In recent years, The Stranger had  _not_  been known for being soft on criminals of any kind. Which means that if he'd decided I was in collusion with Alban, the best I could hope for was that there was nothing left of me for the cops to scrape up and haul off to Harkman. I’d rather die than go back there.

I took another step backwards, arms curving over my middle, and he took a matching step forward, still grinning that eerie grin. He nodded at the flowers.

“I brought you a present,  _cherie_.” His dry, normally static voice cracked into something strained, something  _human_ , and fear gripped me, like I’d never felt before. This voice, the voice of whoever The Stranger was when he wasn't meting out “justice,” was probably the last voice a lot of recent would-be super-villains and wannabes had heard before they wound up in a Harkman cell or Potter’s Field.

“A present?” My voice was suddenly shaking like the rest of me, and I took another step back, just knowing he didn't  _really_  mean the flowers. More likely, he meant a sound beat-down.

The grin slipped a bit, and this time, The Stranger stayed put. I wasn't reassured, though. He’d been notoriously running off the rails of sanity since . . . Jesus, probably since the L’Estraga incident, so . . . more than six years?

It was beginning to sink in how thoroughly fucked I was. “A, um. A real present, or a present like your buddy, Blind Justice, gave Alban?”

The Stranger winced, as if I'd scored a hit of some kind. I couldn't imagine that I had.

“I would nevair . . . I’m not ‘ere to ‘urt you. Not ‘ere to take you to ‘Arkman for your . . . relationship with the Green Knight. Not ‘ere for vengeance. Or zhustice, whatevair that is anymore,” he said, and that last part was more to himself than to me, in that too-calm-and-cracking voice. I almost moved closer. Almost. I dunno, maybe I twitched toward him, or something. Whatever I did, it caused him to focus on me again, with eyes like four a.m. peeking out of the grey, overcast sky of mask and fedora.

Before I could blink, he’d taken something out of one his belt-pouches and tossed it at me. “Theenk fast,  _petite_!”

This was a measure of how readily and stupidly I still trusted anything in a costume—in this  _particular_  costume—that instead of dodging it, I made a grab for it.  _Caught_ it.

It was a strangely tinted beaker that seemed to thrum and pulse with a life of its own. The seal was fancy: some alloy that was probably patented by GodTech or one of its subsidiaries. Inside, was what appeared to be a fingernail-sized shaving of some mineral.

“What's this?” Though I  _knew_  what it was even as I asked. There was really only one thing it  _would_  be. I looked to The Stranger for confirmation and got another smile, more wry and tired, than disquieting.

“A one-way treep to ‘Arkman Sanitorium for the Creeminally Unsound for us both. Or per’aps a firing squad,” The Stranger said, and that voice was getting more and more human by the second. It was too soft and too high, almost no hints of the ice-cold vigilante in it. He really  _was_  cracking up.  _Badly_. “If the Coalition don’ simply ‘ave us dispatched while we await trial.”

I looked at the beaker again. If I unfocused my eyes just a bit, I could see a faint, spectral glow around the mineral inside. Around the  _meteor fragment._

There was a time I would’ve killed my own father for a gift-wrapped dose of eX. Not too long ago, I nearly killed that spivey little shit-heels Acrobat for a smaller fragment than this. But my own wishy-washy attack of conscience had stayed my hand and got me caught. Got me tossed onto Harkman Island, where the criminally unsound (but non-eX) can fare far worse than they would in any standard prison gen-pop. . . .

Nearly swept out to sea by rage red enough to have pulverized the damn thing if it were made of regular glass and if I weren't made of regular human, I only barely refrained from throwing the beaker at The Stranger's head. “How could you?” I asked around the scream welling up in my chest. “After Harkman, and what your precious  _Coalition of Great Justice_  friends did to Alban,  _how could you_? How  _dare_  you, you heartless fucking fraud?”

Surprise never sat well on eX-Norms. They were so used to having the inside dope and the upper hand, that genuine surprise made them look just as human and silly as a Norm. Maybe more so.

“But I thought . . . you wanted—”

“What? To be another miserable eXtra-Normal? To be a  _hero_ , still? To be like  _you_?” The Stranger flinched and I backed up till my legs hit my secondhand couch, and I was forced to sit. I instantly reclined, like a queen holding audience. Whether or not The Stranger ended me, there was nothing left here to fear, least of all this caricature of so-called  _justice_. “Think again, bright eyes! If I’d had any idea how cruel and corrupt—how  _in_ human you all were, I would  _never_ have wanted to be anything like you to begin with!”

“Neithair would any of  _us_ ,” The Stranger said softly. He sounded confused, hurt. Lost. Human. All the things no eX-Norm should ever sound like. My heart wanted to go out to him. Purely a holdover from the good old days, when heroes were always honorable—especially this one—and I’d wanted nothing more than to fight crime by his side. “Lately, I’ve been askeeng myself if maybe . . . I’ve done all the good I can. Maybe there’s notheeng left for me but empty vengeance.”

“That’s deep water you’re treading there, sunshine.” I stopped myself short of wholeheartedly agreeing with him. If The Stranger  _had once_  stood for rigid, impartial justice, now . . . well, no one (even he, apparently) didn't know what he stood for these days. Nor what any of the other intermediate generations of eX-Norms stood for, other than increasingly merciless vigilantism . . . even against the dissenters in their own ranks—everyone knew Lion of Cathay’s little “accident” was about as accidental as the Piedmont Wharfs Massacre of ‘03.

“So, you’re having a mid-life crisis, and you think I—what? Could, or would help you do the job you’ve been butchering for the last six years?” For a moment, rage threatened to take me someplace I’d hoped I’d left behind in Harkman . . . then I slumped, deflated, nauseated, and more drained than angry.

Hadn’t Alban told me that the average eX-Norms—heroes, especially—were just as uncertain about life, the universe, and everything as the average Norm? More so, because many of them had these eXtras, and the crushing drive to do  _something_  with them. To  _be_  somebody.

That  _somebody_  wasn’t always stable. And that  _something_  could and usually did become  _any-damn-fool-thing they thought they could get away with._

 _“There seem,” Alban had mused, staring up at the cloudy moonlight coming in through the window of my one room apartment. (I was still on probation from Harkman, and he had recently escaped. Any hero or cop seeing us here, like this . . .  would mean life in Harkman for us both. Well,_ another _life sentence for Alban, who’d racked up nearly as many of those as Moleculizer, and Doctor Od.)_

 _In the_    _corner, near my closet, his shield whirred and beeped to itself. Its perimeter_    _scans_    _continued to show negative, as they always would. Though Alban was generally careful to_    _keep_    _his work separate from our time together, the shield was a much lesser_    _evil_    _than the heroes or even the cops getting the drop on us._

 _“There seem_    _to_    _be only two options for even the most talented and focused among us: Marvel_    _or_    _Menace. Avenging angel or ruthless profiteer. Preserver or Destroyer.”_

 _“And which are you?” I’d asked seriously, walking my fingers through his silvering chest hair, lingering over a strong heartbeat. He’d looked at me and smiled, cool and aloof as usual . . . a little sad, a little bitter. His was the look of a man who had lots of reasons to_ be _sad and bitter—who knew life wasn’t about to stop giving him more—but still found reasons to smile, anyway._

 _(I_    _understood, then, that _I_  was one of those reasons. It was the best_  _moment_   _of my life . . ._    _even_    _knowing what I know now.)_

 _“Can you not_    _guess, my lovely friend?” Alban often slipped into_   _mentor-mode_    _when we were_    _together. I certainly hadn’t expected things to change because we’d just_    _finished_    _swapping bodily fluids for the first time._

 _“I’d guess . . ._   _you’re a little bit of both. And worlds more, besides.” It was the first_    _thing_    _to pop into my head, and so came spilling out of my mouth. But for once,_    _it_    _worked in my favor. His eyes got that tender, if melancholy look I’d come to_    _see_    _more and more often, as time went on. But when he kissed me, it was slow,_   _and_   _perfect. . . ._

God, I was such a fool.

“. . . maybe someone like  _you_  should be out there. Maybe . . . I don’ know. I don’ want it to be just me out there. Fighteeng alone. Always in the dark, always alone,” The Stranger was saying, jarring me out of memory tar-pit trap. I looked up at him feeling . . . lost, broken . . . dead, but still going through the motions. Like I suppose most people feel.

Then I was angry again. He had the nerve to discover self-doubt, and possibly even the beginnings of a proto-conscience, far too late to do me any good. “You’ve got brass ones, you know that, Stranger? And this—” I held up my hand—the hand with the beaker still thrumming in it—and rubbed my first finger and thumb together, smirking as I played the world’s smallest violin. The hero had been brought low, and I was delivering the  _fuck you_  I’d been waiting to give for six years. It was a hollow victory, but I did my best to savor it. “This is what I think about your little pity-party, okay? So just take your angst, and shove it right up your—”

Suddenly, The Stranger was  _right there_ , and I was being hauled off the couch by both arms. His grip was like a velvet vise, and my feet wound up several inches off the floor. The beaker fell out of my nerveless, sweaty fingers, and even though I struggled . . . I wasn't going anywhere. “Thees ees no jokeenng matter,” he said, all thunderclap voice and thundercloud eyes. He smelled like the rainy night outside my window, like wet wool, like licorice. I’d only been this close to him once before—not that I’d been able to notice many details, what with having just been slammed into a brick wall hard enough to nearly lose consciousness—but he’d smelled like sweat and blood, then. Like chemicals.

Like maybe he hadn’t bothered to bathe in the several days since the explosion in L’Estraga’s lair. . . .

I wanted nothing more than to laugh in The Stranger's face, but his eyes were too harried, too haunted. And I was too tired, too sad to get any enjoyment from someone else’s pain. “Put me down and get out. I don’t wanna be your fucking comic relief anymore.” Which was true. Recently, life hadn’t left much room for anything that wasn't grieving, and keeping below the radar. Surviving. Deciding what to do about Alban’s unexpected legacy.

Right on cue, the oddly random nausea I’d been getting for the past three weeks—usually in the evening, not the morning; in this, too, I was bass-ackward—rolled over me like a spew-tsunami. I closed my eyes, breathing heavily in and out, praying for control. Who knew what this psycho would do to me if I puked on him?

Suddenly, my feet touched the floor, and when The Stranger let go of me, I folded onto the couch like crumpled origami, legs tucked under me. I wanted to curl into a ball and cry. I wanted to squinch my eyes shut, then open them and find him gone. I wanted Alban’s arms around me, and his voice in my ear . . . but I settled for wrapping my own arms around myself. Rocking didn’t help with the queasies, but I was rocking anyway. “Please, just go. If you’re not gonna arrest me, or kill me, stop tormenting me and just  _go_ , okay?”

The couch creaked as The Stranger sat next to me. I glanced over at him warily, but he wasn't looking at me. His hands were on his knees, and he was looking out at the rainy night, his profile a grim, granite aquiline. “’Will you keep the Green Knight’s child?” he asked, and. . . .

Oh . . . God. Oh, fuck. Oh,  _God_.

I squirmed into the corner of my couch, nausea forgotten, suddenly cold and shivering. I was afraid again, but not for myself. “How did you know?”  _And what are you going to do about it?_

A jerky twitch, as if he was uncomfortable. Miserable, even “Your arms ‘ave been wrap aroun’ your stomach since you come out ‘ere. You . . . move deefferently—”

“You know how I  _move_?” The shivers increased, and The Stranger looked at me. He smiled wanly, as if I was some particularly perplexing logic puzzle.

“I know a lot of things about you.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Merely a fact,  _petite_.” The smile widened, before disappearing entirely. “Look, I don’ know what the deefference in ‘ow you move signifies till I see you doing that.” He nodded at me, and I realized I had my arms wrapped around my middle again. I almost stopped, but—hell, now that the cat was out of the bag, what was the point? I felt like I could use all the comfort I could get, and this poor kid . . . barely two months into his existence, and he was already a crutch for his loser parent.

“Fair enough. And to answer your question, yes, I’m keeping  _Alban_ ’s child.” It was a pointed reminder that whatever else he was to the world—anarchist, guerilla, terrorist, and yes, ruthless supervillain—the Green Knight was also a man, and though he probably hadn’t known it, a father.

The Stranger looked briefly determined, as if gearing himself up for a particularly difficult discussion. Too late. “When ‘e try to destroy GodTech Plaza . . . did ‘e know you were there? Did ‘e know you were with child?”

Okay. It was not the conversation I expected, and probably not one The Stranger wanted to have. And he probably already knew the answers his questions, just as I did. Of  _course_  Alban knew I’d be in the GodTower, at ten a.m. on a Wednesday morning. It simply hadn’t mattered to him.  _I_  hadn’t mattered to him, at least not more than his ideology. Knowing I was pregnant—if he’d known—would’ve changed fuck-all.

I snorted. “He was an eX-Norm. Who knows what he knew, and when he knew it?” The night we’d conceived was the first time I’d seen Alban in eight months—the last time I saw him alive—and absence aside … it’d been intense. After he left, I’d tried unsuccessfully to banish the certainty that that night might be our last together whether or not he succeeded. We’d both known he was planning something very, very big. “If he knew, he didn’t tell me. He also didn’t let me in on any of his . . . surprises. If he had, you can bet I’d have called in sick that day!”

I was a little too strident and The Stranger winced. No stomach for gallows humor? How disappointing. “I didn’t want to know what he was doing. Not talking shop while we were together was an unspoken rule we both followed. The fact is, if I’d known what he was planning to do, even had an inkling . . . I woulda dropped a dime on him, and he knew it.”

”If I’d evair thought otherwise, I wouldn’ be ‘ere, now,” The Stranger looked up at me as he said this, charged and intent. There was a quick glance at my stomach, which wouldn’t show for a couple months at least, then back up to my eyes. Something in the unforgiving lines of face and mask seemed to soften, even as they grew more melancholy. “Are you . . . alright? Your ‘ealth, your financez—”

“Do you care?”

There was a flash of something in those changeable eyes that might have been annoyance. “I am askeeng, am I not?”

I sighed. “You never gave a damn about me before. Why start now?”

He opened his mouth to reply, then shut it. Looked away, back out my window. “I don’t know,” he said flatly, and it felt like the least honest thing he’d said since he broke into my apartment. “Maybe I’m tryeeng to right past wrongs.”

“Now  _there’s_  a laugh and a half! You  _had_  your chance to guide and mentor me, Billy-Jack. Remember?” I could tell from the way his lips twisted that he did. I hadn’t been sure he would. Not as well as  _I_  remembered it. Each hurtful, humiliating moment stood out as bright and fresh as if it’d happened yesterday. “If you didn’t care then, why would you care now?”

“I ‘ave no answairs for you, Crims—”

“Not good enough.” I had to fight hard not to slug him, knowing full well I’d probably only break my hand. “And I’m not Crimson Casey anymore. Haven’t been since I got outta Harkman. I’m just another ex-villain keeping my head down and trying to get along.”

The Stranger flinched again. Curious. And curiouser: the way he wasn't meeting my eyes. Maybe he  _did_  feel guilty about the way things shook out. “Eet was my fault you were in there. I accept that—”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Giggles, you didn’t turn me bad. I was unstable, and looking for bottom. For  _trouble_ , and for once I found what I was looking for.” Not surprisingly, I was as lame a villain as I was a sidekick. I got sucked into Mistress De’Ath’s gang, and there was no way I’d have gotten out alive if not for this hunk of contradictions on my couch. Having failed Mistress several times already, no doubt trying to kill her then favorite, Acrobat, was the final straw. Mistress wasn’t known for her swell retirement package, if you follow me. The bodies of her former flunkies had an uncanny way of turning up in odd places . . . in odd pieces.

In the hate-haze of the moments before The Stranger had body-checked me, I remember pummeling Acrobat till my fists were bruised, swollen, and bloody—though not all of the blood was hers.

Acrobat’s formerly pretty face was practically hamburger, and I was a quick Coalition of Great Justice Tribunal away from a three year vacation in Harkman. . . .

Though there were times I almost believed otherwise, Harkman was probably at least one step better than dead. People came back from Harkman. Changed. Broken. Sometimes  _wrong_. But they came back.

No one ever came back from the dead. Not even in this day and age. Not for ReAnimator’s lack of trying.

So I offered The Stranger a mock toast with an imaginary beer stein. “Either Mistress would’ve killed me, or one of the other eX-Norms in her gang would’ve played hacky-sack with my organs. You catching me was the best thing that could’ve happened to me, at that point.”

“At that point, yes. But eef not for the way I be’ave after we catch L’Estraga . . . eef I’d cared then, neithair of us would be where we are, now.”

And I’d never have gone to Harkman, and never have met Alban. I’d probably have got my stupid ass killed years ago, trying to fight the good fight. That’s assuming I didn’t become an eX-Norm. If I had, I’d probably still have died or wound up in Harkman, anyway. “I’d likely be worse off than I am now. Some people aren’t meant to be more than Human.”

“That’s . . . a possibility. The powairs  _change_  you. Make you both more an’ less than you evair thought you could be,” The Stranger said heavily, and that kind of weary defeat in the voice of someone I’d loved and hated, idealized and demonized—the person who’d saved my life a handful of times that I know of, and was partly responsible for the death of my friend, my lover, my would-be murderer, and the father of my unborn child—was disturbing. But not as disturbing as the intensity of his voice as he leaned closer, his eyes shining with what I hoped weren’t tears. “I nevair meant for any of thees to ‘appen to you, an’ I don’ know ‘ow to make theengs right. . . .”

My fear and anger had been dissolving, turning to something that was almost pity. But suddenly anger, at least, was rallying once more. Pity for the broken avenging angel on my couch was turning to annoyance, at best. “Don’t you get it? There  _is_  no making things right.  _This_ , here and now, is the best of all possible worlds for me, and even if it isn’t, it’s the only world I’ve got. Maybe that sucks. But that’s the way it is.”

I watched as he covered his face with gloved hands and didn’t know what to do or how to feel. I couldn’t tell if he was weeping and wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But I reached out, and after a moment, let my hand settle slowly, lightly on his shoulder. Sometimes Extra-Normals, especially the heroes, had violent instinctive responses when touched unexpectedly.

But The Stranger’s response was neither the expected violent one, nor the sincerely-hoped-against sobbing one. He merely shuddered, like an old jalopy, and groaned.

It was pathetic. The only thing more pathetic, was me sidling closer to put my arm around him. His cape was cool and damp . . . ridiculously soft. The way I’d used to imagine his hair—whatever color it was—had felt underneath the scarf and fedora.

The infamous fedora that I was now pushing off. He made no move to stop me, but another deep shudder shook him. He muttered something in French that sounded regretful and self-mocking: “ _Si je pouvais donner en retour votre innocence, je le ferais. Je vous protéger et de vous aimer jusqu'à mon dernier souffle.”_

I laid my hand on the silken, sweat-dampened scarf. He turned toward me fast— _eXtra_ -fast—and hugged me close, his face pressed against my hair. That rain-and-licorice scent engulfed me, and I was forced backwards in time, to the worst moment of my life. . . .

 _The City’s_    _chief_    _crime fighter and symbol of justice— **The Stranger**_ **’s** _dark, steely gaze_   _pins_   _his would-be sidekick as surely as his hands pin her_   _arms. Crumbly bits of wet brick dig into the would-be’s handmade, violently_   _crimson_   _vinyl-and-spandex costume._

 _“For the last time, I don’ need a sidekick, nor do I want one!”_ ** _The Stranger_** _growls, gravel-voiced and angry. “_ Go ‘ome _, leetle girl. This city . . . she don’ need anothair powairrless van-girl like you, runneeng aroun’, cauzeeng as much trouble as you get eento!”_

 _“But I—” Crimson Casey’s mewling is cut short by a wracking cough. In the week since_   _the_   _L’Estraga incident, her (attempted) tracking of **The Stranger**_ _has_   _been_   _stepped up to nightly, rain, sleet, or snow. Out of a silly conviction_   _that_   _if they worked together well enough to bring down L’Estraga then maybe_   _they’d work well together_   _in_   _other_   _capers. Catch other super-villains, such_   _as—_

 _“The Non-Denominator!” Crimson Casey coughs out around pained breaths that taste of_   _salty_   _blood. This coughing will shortly become a life-threatening case of_   _pneumonia. “He’s just escaped from Harkman, again! I—I thought that together we_ _could—”_

 _“There is no ‘_ we _!’ Get that through your crazy leetle skull!” **The Stranger**_ ** _’s_** _thin lips curl in a formidable sneer. “There nevair weel be a ‘we.’ I work alone, an’ even eef I deedn’, I wouldn’ work with_ you _. Leave me be, or I make you sorry!”_

 _“But—but I_ helped _you!” Crimson Casey whines incredulously, dangling from **The Stranger’s**  negligent grip like a frightened, wet rodent. The finger-shaped bruises on her biceps will be weeks going away completely. “_I _was the one who discovered who L’Estraga really was! I was the one that risked life and limb and job security to make sure the truth got into the right hands!”_

 _The truth . . . that_   _Miranda Baxter, heir to the Baxter Publishing Empire, and chief editor of The National Gazette was pure evil. That this close, personal friend of_   _potentates_   _and prime ministers, this head of the Sullivan Committee, and a_   _dozen_   _other major charities_   _was_   _as heartless as they came. That this_   _figurative—and literal, it turns out—superwoman_   _who always got what she aimed_   _for, from Pulitzer prizes, to the hand of up-and-coming_   _entrepreneuse_ _Dominique_ _Godineau_   _. . . was a walking plague, intent on killing the world to rebuild it in_   _her_   _image._

 _This_   _erstwhile_ _employer of one Cassandra Reineke—part-time stringer for the Gazette’s Local Beat and contributor to the online Gazette’s Marvel-Beat_   _blog—was pure venom of_   _the muckiest_   _water._

 _“Stumble upon the truth, as I recall. Would ‘ave died when she realize you knew, eef I ‘adn’t saved your ass—sometheeng I’m beginneeng to deeply regret.” Cracking, contemptuous voice and a sneer of distaste—partially shadowed by wet fedora as **The Stranger**  glances away for a moment. Then spiteful, glittering eyes once again pin Crimson Casey, who suddenly has the strong, but impossible sense that the city’s favorite eX-Norm is _this _close to committing murder. “You’re notheeng but trouble. Do the world a favor an’ steeck to your day-job.”_

 _ **The Stranger**_ _lets_   _Crimson Casey_   _slide_   _down the wall, to the wet ground like trash. He quite indifferently_   _watches_   _the struggle for breath, for words, for_ _dignity . . . and_   _the_   _doomed_   _attempt_   _to rescue a pathetic, stupid, homemade spandex costume in shiny,_   _disco-ball red from mud and dead leaves and garbage._

 _He watches Crimson Casey_   _fail_   _epically at life for neither the first, nor the last time._

 _“Please, I_   _just_   _wanted to help you—that’s all I ever wanted!” the clueless,_ _not-so-intrepid sidekick says brokenly, a sodden, protean puddle at the feet of_   _her_   _idol._

 _Yet is_   _this_   _not_   _expected? Isn’t this how it always ends, eventually? In failure and_   _humiliation?_

 _Hasn’t life_   _taught_   _her that, above anything else?_

 _Crimson Casey is wrapped around in a_   _luxuriant_   _sense of hopelessness, misery, and_   _death-deep despair as she realizes the person she’s_   _looked_   _up to for years . . . wants_   _her dead. This person who’s dedicated his life to_ _preserving life would_   _take_   _hers, if he could._

 _After an_   _eternity, **The Stranger**_ _whirls around and strides out of the rain-swept alley,_   _cape_   _flapping_   _and throwing shadows in the stark flashes between_   _thunderings. . . ._

 

TBC

 


	2. Part 1: The Usual Suspects - Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crimson Casey and The Stranger continue their heart to heart. Secrets are revealed, as are identities/alter egos. The Stranger makes Crimson Casey the offer of a lifetime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A send up of superhero & supervillain comics, movies, television shows, and books. In which damn-near everyone is LGBTQIA, some people are non-binary, and a few people aren't even from Earth.
> 
> 'Ware the tags. If the story, which is WIP, takes a turn, I'll note in tags and in chapter notes before the story. Okay? Okay.

**Chapter 2**

 

“Please, let go of me,” I asked stiffly, and he did. Immediately. He even scooted down the couch a little. Such meek compliance, that of a repeatedly kicked puppy, did the opposite of stoking the burning shame and rage remembering that night usually caused. It confused and troubled me.

The Stranger watched me quietly, patiently, hopefully. So quietly and patiently and hopefully, it became intolerable, and I looked away. I focused, instead, on the flowers he’d brought. They had the most vividly red petals I’d ever seen, maroon at their hearts, and they were lavishly fragrant. “What kinda flowers are those, anyway?”

“Crimson Caseys.” I glared over at him and he laughed a little, self-deprecatingly. “That is their name,  _petite_. I know someone ‘oo ‘appen to be a van of yours. ‘E also ‘appen to be a ‘orticulturalist of considairable talent. ‘E went to a lot of time and trouble to create these for you, so I bring them, an’ ‘is warmest regards.”

Every sidekick and wannabe had at least one fan. Crimson Casey’d had quite a few in her brief hey-day—mostly losers who got all excited at a bad-girl in crimson spandex and vinyl. A few had tried to contact me care of Harkman, once I got out. But Harkman’s strict code of silence regarding prisoner identity took care of even the most persistent. Crimson Casey was an easily forgotten flash-in-the-pan among thousands of wannabe villains.

Or so I’d thought.

I took a flower. Held it close enough to sniff without getting it too close to my face. The scent was . . . simply intoxicating. “Is this friend of yours in the Coalition of Great Justice?”

“Not a member of the Coalition, no,” The Stranger said, and I relaxed. An eXtra-Norm, probably. But not on the Coalition’s rotating roster of the righteous. Interesting.

I returned the flower to its bouquet with an eye for thorns, but there were none. “Why did you really come here? I mean, I get it: you feel bad for being a jerk six years ago. Apology accepted; shit happens. Clearly you were going through something, and it didn’t help having someone like me yappin’ at your heels. As for what went down between Alban and me . . . that’s one of the hazards of fucking a supervillain. Hell, I’m glad you and your friends caught him, ‘cause . . . a lot of people would’ve died if you hadn’t, including me and . . . and my baby. But none of that tells me why you’re here, now.”

The Stranger’s eyes glittered like wet malachite and he took a deep breath. “I’m ‘ere because I theenk you might need a frien’—someone ‘oo understand exactly what you’re going through right now. I feel that way for  _‘er_ , six years ago. When I ‘ad to put ‘er in preeson. . . .” a deep breath, taken quickly and released slowly. “I am sorry. Thees ees . . . ‘arder than I thought eet would be.”

But he didn’t have to finish connecting the dots. I could see the picture pretty clearly. Six years ago, my own personal Jesus had, for reasons then unknown, had to restrain himself from murdering me. Granted, he’d never been anything other than coolly, politely impersonal to, or sometimes mildly annoyed with me, but after I went to him with the truth about Bitch-Monster Baxter, he’d . . . changed. Became callous, brooding, and cruel. Not just to me, but to everyone. Till it had become common knowledge that The Stranger’s impartial crusade for justice had turned into a vigilante violence spree bordering on repeated felonious assault of relatively petty criminals.

And now . . . I knew why.

I was too shocked to be angry, though I could feel a slow burn building within me that didn’t bode well for me keeping my cool. “L’Estraga was your . . . what? Your  _lover_?” The Stranger nods once, reluctantly. “And you had the nerve to tell me  _I_  wasn’t the kind of protector this city needed?! You fucking  _hypocrite_!” 

“ _Miranda Baxter_  was my lovair, not L’Estraga.” Old, steely anger still made his voice raw after so many years. And why wouldn’t it? Miranda Baxter screwed over a lot of people in her bid for absolute power: her sons, her investors and friends, her lover— _lovers_ —most of whom had bounced back:

Adrian Tiernan was recruited by the FBI not too long after his mother was neutralized. Last I heard, he was the Bureau’s Deputy Chief of eXtra-Norms Affairs. His twin brother Gabriel was the CEO of a very much diminished Baxter Publishing, long since rebranded the Tiernan-Eigler Group.

And Dominique Godineau . . .  my ex-boss’s ex-fiancee had never chased the spotlight, but after the trial—she attended every day of it—she went back to micromanaging her businesses. In the six years since the L’Estraga clusterfuck, GodTech Industries had increased its holdings and its worth exponentially.

(And in one of those odd twists of fate, I wound up being one of the nearly half million worker bees it employed—had been for just over three years, as of the attempted terrorist attack. Alban had known this but was, of course, too circumspect to pump  _me_  for information even after he must’ve surely begun planning his attack. He’d obviously had someone on the inside, but it wasn’t me.)

Not one of us was made of sterner stuff than Norm. Yet all of us had handled Miranda Baxter’s betrayal much better than The Stranger had. Better than  _I’d_  handled  _The Stranger_ ’s betrayal, and much better than I’d been not-handling Alban’s.

“The way I treated you was awful—I won’t make excuses for my behavior. For the things I’ve said. But I feel as if I owe you my reasons. The truth. All of it,” he said, and paused for the few seconds it took me to process the sudden lack of—in retrospect—cheesy French accent. “Putting Miranda in prison was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and for a long time, I didn’t know who I hated more: her, myself, or you. The result of that was . . . I behaved inexcusably to you. For that, I’m sorrier than I can—”

“Shut up,” I said quietly and he did, looking mournful somehow, despite the half-mask.

Okay. So, he wasn’t really French. At least not French enough to have an accent that over-the-top thick. So what? It’s pretty much B.F.D., in the face of the fact that he’d been screwing the worst supervillain since Cosmosis, but had no idea till I, little old naive me, laid the truth on him.

Happens to everyone, I suppose.

I leaned back on the armrest of my couch and crossed my arms. Somehow, I managed a smirk even Codename: LoKee would be proud of. “All this time, I thought you were going through some heroic angst. Something that us mere Norms couldn’t begin to understand. But it was a hell of a lot more petty and common than that. You got your heart broken, and you took it out on an entire city.” Had I thought Alban too cynical? Not for a long time—time which had only proved him right. In their own cack-handed way, heroes could be worse than villains, sometimes. “You wanna hear some  _real_  truth? Not you, or any of your eX-Norm friends give a damn about us Norms. Not really. To you, we’re just convenient pawns and scape-goats. We don’t have feelings, or hopes, or any worth beyond that. We’re just a goddamn  _hobby_  to you all, just a way for you to entertain yourselves!”

I didn’t even realize I’d stood up and was backing away from The Stranger till I knocked over my cheap, crappy end table. The lamp on it was made of some weird GodTech polymer that bounced easier than it broke. The thud of it startled me, and The Stranger didn’t move, didn’t do anything but watch me miserably.

“I didn’t say they’d be noble reasons, just that they’d be my own.” He exhaled hard. “I’m Human, Cassandra, eXtras aside. Sometimes I make poor choices. Very poor, unfortunately. Miranda wasn’t the first; she won’t be the last.”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like in there?” I demanded, ducking my head to hide tears. I could tell stories about being one of the only Norms in Harkman Max-Sec. About how it was when they found out I wasn’t unbreakable. About how horrific those first months were, with no one but Mentallo to look to for protection. Granted, the inhibitor implant made it nearly impossible for her to rally her powers—would double her over with severe cramps and migraines if she tried. But if she was bored enough during lock-down, or long nights—if Harkman’s transmitter experienced even a brief hiccup. . . .

A nice game of make-the-Norm-injure-herself was worth the debilitating discomfort of the Agonizers the guards used liberally on her, when they got tired of my screams. . . .

Oh, yes. I could tell stories about each and every scar that no one but the Harkman sawbones and Alban had ever seen.

“I loved her, Cassandra,” The Stranger went on as if I hadn’t spoken, seemingly apropos of nothing, too lost in his own story to really notice mine. Such was the way of the world, and so help me, I think I preferred him calling me ‘Crimson.’ “That doesn’t mitigate the awful things she did, and tried to do, just as the awful things Alban Efros did don’t mitigate your feelings for him. If not for the Coalition, thousands of people would have died, including you. He would’ve killed someone who loved him, and not out of spite, not because he didn’t love you back, but because he couldn’t afford tipping anyone off about his plan beforehand. Nothing was more important than The Plan. Not even the woman he loved—”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think I do,” The Stranger said and it was enough to put foundational cracks in the wall of numb, non-feeling I’d kept around myself since the day my lover nearly blew me, and three hundred thousand other people straight to Hell. “Even when I found out she was worse than your Green Knight ever dreamed of being, I would have let myself be subverted. I would’ve let her kill the world to keep her . . . but for you being there, by my side. Willing me to do the right thing—the  _good_  thing. I couldn’t let her escape—couldn’t  _go with her_  because of you. In that moment, you were everyone I swore to look after. Every person that stood naked and powerless against evil they couldn’t hope to defeat … but stood against it, nonetheless, trusting that I, and others like me, would be there to aid them. You were my only tangible link with the people I wanted to protect.” 

“Let me get this straight—” I laughed incredulously, pinching the bridge of my nose to stave off what felt like the mother of all screaming-crying jags. I’d weathered worse than this. My mother’s death; The Stranger’s hatred; my father turning his back on me after I got caught and convicted; and most recently, Alban’s willingness to kill me for his dreams.

God, and this damn  _baby_  that I couldn’t come to grips with, but who I already loved, and would do anything to protect . . . compared to all that, The Stranger’s little revelation just shouldn’t stack up. “You’re blaming me for your attack of decency? Am I supposed to say  _I’m sorry_ , or say  _you’re welcome_?”

The Stranger laced his gloved fingers in his lap. If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn he was fighting the urge to fidget. “I know the pain of having the purest, strongest feeling you’ve ever felt be twisted against you, used to manipulate you till you don’t even know who you are. Twice, now, this has happened to you, and both times were, directly and indirectly, due to my actions. I understand, now, and I apologize from the bottom of what little heart I have left. I don’t know if I can ever make things right between us, but if you let me, I’ll try.”

“Is that so? Where the  _Hell_  was this apology six years ago? Or four? Or two? Why do you only care now that it’s too late to make a difference? When it doesn’t even  _matter_?” I exploded, and The Stranger hung his head, but didn’t answer. Suddenly, I was so  _tired_ , again.  _Exhausted_ , and I felt like thirty going on eighty-five.

_This is the_ _way_ _of the world. Lie after lie, then apology after apology. It never ends, it never gets any easier,_  I told myself, and tried to harden myself. “What the hell do you want from me, Stranger? Forgiveness? Catharsis? Another hug?”

He stood up slowly, took another deep, quick breath, and removed his left glove, then his right. The hands they revealed were pale, square, and work-rough, with long, blunt fingers and neatly trimmed nails.

“I would like very much to unmask for you,” he said simply, stepping back. His hands went to his waist, and a second later the infamous utility belts dropped to the floor with a heavy clunk. I nearly dove for the damn things, forget water under the bridge. I just wanted to see what was  _in_  them. But The Stranger’s hands were on the cloak fastenings next, and I restrained myself.

It’s not every day a hero unmasks to a civilian—or to anyone.

“May I show you who I am?” 

Soft, soft voice, like nothing I’d ever heard from him . . . I shouldn’t have been standing there, gaping. I should have been putting a stop to this—as if I could have. As if I could stop The Stranger from revealing himself if he was really of a mind to do it. . . .

Ah, who was I kidding? The truth was, even after all those years, all the anger and blame and regret, I’d have still given my right arm to be in the know. About  _everything_. “Tell me why, first: why me, and why now?”

“There are only three people in the world I would trust with this secret, and the other two already know. I … want _you_ to know, at last, who I am, and for there to be no more lies between us.” The Stranger held my gaze for long moments before biting his lip and looking away.

Gobsmacked, and faking a  _sang_ _froi_  I’d never had, I nodded once, half-certain this was all a trick, and I was about to be sent to Harkman again—this time for life, and then some. But I held my peace, and the grey wool tunic was unbuttoned and cast off, revealing a stiff, lightweight armored shirt underneath. It was a form-fitting thing, and the form it revealed was nothing like the one the tunic had always hinted at.

I was gaping again. I must have been. I had always been prone to it when shocked out of my certainties. The Stranger glanced down at his—at  _her_  armor-flattened breasts, then back up at me, smiling nervously. “Pretty good disguise, eh?”

“Omigod, you’re a  _girl_!” The screaming-crying jag that had been welling up within me punctured, and a laugh came out, followed by giggles and snorts, until there were tears streaming down my face and I couldn’t catch my breath. Every time I thought I was about to stop, I found myself staring at her boobs and I was off to the races again.

“All this t-time, you’ve been in d-drag!” It snuck out between gasps and snickers. I was always good at reading the facial expressions of masked persons—this one in particular. But it didn’t take an empath to read the snooty irritation and bemusement written on her face.

“Well, I suppose this is an improvement. The last woman I unmasked for tried to kill me.” A wry, almost familiar laugh, and after a few seconds of hesitation, the silk headscarf landed on my carpet; chin-length auburn hair fell free around his— _her_  still-masked face, and the laughter stopped like my throat had been cut. More clues started adding up and pieces ground into place like tectonic plates. All the half-familiar bits of him—of  _her_ , goddamnit—finally made sense.

I felt deficient for not having put it together before now, and betrayed all over again.

“ _You_ ,” I croaked, nausea once again tickling the edges of my shock. My legs felt like they were made of bread-pudding, and I didn’t need to see behind the mask to know who this was. Who it’d _always_ _been_. That hair, the sharp, stubborn jaw and those dark, watchful eyes . . . I suddenly knew who  _her_  Alter was. I  _should_  have known. I’d been seeing that face in and out of my lowly corner of the GodTower regularly for nearly two years, and in and out of the news for much longer than that.

This was the face that I’d grown accustomed to, and even trusting of, frequent visits to Human Resources—way too frequent, even for a micromanaging, workaholic captain of industry to whom “delegate” means next to nothing—notwithstanding. But those visits didn’t seem so work-related, anymore. Nor did the casual, but vaguely probing conversations she almost always instigated. The tentative, almost deferential, extra-professional interest in  _me_  she seemed to suffer from didn’t seem so innocent, anymore.

_Seemed to_ _suffer from_  until—seven or eight weeks ago, I guess. Till around the time the Coalition killed Alban. From what I’d heard, she’d been running around for weeks afterward, smoothing the ruffled feathers of investors and personally overseeing the overhaul of Plaza security.

I’d been so steeped in confusion and grief—and yes, anger—that I hadn’t even missed her. Then, on my way out the GodTower this evening, I’d nearly knocked her down in a headlong rush to get out of my cubicle and home. All I’d wanted was to deal with the results of this morning’s ObGyn appointment alone.

I had completely blown off her vaguely awkward, unprecedented request to take me to dinner so we could discuss “certain matters of importance.” Ignored the grave—even for her—look in her eyes that said the invite wasn’t personal. At least not  _merely_  personal. Whatever bomb she’d wanted to drop, I hadn’t wanted to know, yet. I had wanted time to come to grips with my pregnancy, and the realization that I’d not be terminating it, despite what I’d decided before having actual  _proof_. . . .

I stepped forward on rubbery legs, reaching up for the mask that might have been transparent for all that it hid her true identity, now. My fingers brushed cool, soft skin that was warm where the mask had covered it. Then I was backing away, the mask falling from my nerveless finger. I sat down hard on my secondhand sofa.

“Dominique Godineau,” I breathed, and he—damnit, _she_ —nodded once, lowering dark, troubled eyes. Tears sprang to my own eyes and I blinked them away. I wouldn’t give _her_ the satisfaction.

“You know, I’d been wondering why a busy, powerful CEO would even notice, let alone talk to an ex-con paper-pusher,” I said shakily. “Some of HR thought that you had the hots for me, or something, but that didn’t feel right. Because why on Earth would the hermit-queen of cutting edge biotech be interested in someone with a rap-sheet like mine? Even just to fuck me, right?” I couldn’t seem to control my mouth. Finding out my once-hero was really my boss—not to mention my ex-boss’s ex-fiance—seemed to have smacked the discretion right out of me. “Frankly, I’d assumed that, like so many other super-rich people with consciences, you were indulging in a misplaced sense of guilt over the plight of the little guy. Or that maybe you just wanted to commiserate with someone else who got burned, even if it was to a much lesser extent, by Bitch-Monster Baxter. But this. . . .”

I laughed and ran my hands through my hair. Tugged on it, till the roots of my teeth stung and ached.

Dominique Godineau watched me with The Stranger’s expressive eyes, and I didn’t see _how_ I could’ve missed this. Granted, people see only what they want or expect to see, but . . . well, I suppose it was a  _very_  good disguise.

“At first, I  _wasn’t_  sure why I kept pestering you, other than guilt and worry,” Dominique admitted with a sigh, shifting nervously. She was a tallish, strong-featured woman with killer biceps, broad, exhaustion-slumped shoulders and hi-tech body armor. A surrealist dream made flesh. “I don’t know when or how . . . but you became  _real_  to me. A person who’d had several life-shattering upsets, but somehow kept on going. Who stood up no matter how many times you were knocked down. You became . . . my hero, Crimson Casey.”

I was beginning to think there was nothing she could call me that wouldn’t have me in tears or seeing, well, crimson. “Get it through your head, okay? I’m  _not_  her anymore. And if there was a time I was sidekick material . . . that time has passed!”

She knelt in front of me, like a nervous boyfriend about to propose, picked up the sealed beaker, and squeezed it till there was a tinkle-crunch of breaking glass and crumpling metal. Her eyes never left mine, and she held out a palm full of blood, glass, and meteorite. “I don’t want you to be my sidekick. I want you to be my partner.”

“I’m a pregnant ex-con!” I remind her, putting one hand on my stomach. The headache was gathering steam, but at least the nausea had passed. “I’m mourning the loss of my baby-daddy, who happened to be a supervillain, and you want  _me_  to be your partner-in-crime-fighting? Have you suffered a traumatic head injury recently?”

An ironic half-smile quirked her mouth. “I assure you, I have not. I just . . . would like you to be a part of my life—lives. As my partner, yes, or my friend, or both, if you wish. This—” she indicated her bloody gift “—is simply a good faith gesture.”

“You mean a bribe?”

“I _mean_ a good faith gesture. There are no strings attached. If you wish it, it’s yours, whether or not you want anything else to do with me. I know you’re a balls-to-the-wall fighter, and you’ve got a lot of heart. The latter is something in short supply among the CGJ,” she added with a hell of a lot of composure for someone who, in the meantime, was bleeding all over her costume and my carpet.

_Sometimes,_  I reflected with sudden and suspicious Zen,  _my life takes very odd turns. So much for the_ _cleaning_ _deposit_.

I shook my head and reached out for the sliver, a dull silvery glimmer in a nest of rent flesh, blood, and glass. . . .

Before my fingers could touch it, I drew back a little, and closed her hand around the sliver. It was both the hardest and the easiest thing I’d ever done, and she nodded once, frowning at her hand as if she’d never seen it before.

“Shall I go, then?”

“Go? Go  _where_? The emergency room? Probably. Christ—look, I’ve got Bactine and some clean bandages. Will you heal up alright with just that?” I asked exasperatedly, for the moment ignoring the desperate, hopeful look on her face. It was nothing I wanted to decipher or deal with, not on top of everything else.

I stood up and she just knelt there, dripping more blood, gazing up at me like maybe she really  _did_  think I was her hero. Ridiculous. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ C’mon, get up, Stranger.” I tugged on her good arm till she stood up, too, and steered her down the brief hall, past my bedroom and to the bathroom. To my industrial first aid kit, the one I’d bought expressly for taking care of Alban, just in case. . . .

I tipped down the toilet lid, sat The Stranger— _my boss_ —on it, grabbed the first aid kit from under the bath towels then parked myself on the clothes hamper. I held her palm up at eye level. Yeesh, did it look grisly. “Alright, I’m thinking the first thing to come out is the piece of glowing meteor lodged in your palm, okay?”

No response. I took that as agreement and removed it carefully. It was large enough that the tweezers weren’t necessary, but I used them, anyway. Even minimal exposure to meteor radiation could play hobble-de-hoy with your DNA, and past dreams of hero-dom aside, there’s the baby to consider. Though with Alban for his father, who knows what eXtras he might be born with?

The meteorite fragment went on the sink, next to my water glass; a bloody, dangerous sleeping aid. Then I was sneaking glances at The Stranger as I tweezed first metal, then glass out of her palm. There was a rapt, weirdly avid expression on her face as she watched me work.

“You were a strange child, weren’t you? No pun intended,” I added. Her eyes ticked to mine for a moment and she smiled. It was Dominique’s wry, not-quite-at-ease smile, and I looked away. I wished . . . it was upsetting, to me, you know? I don’t mean knowing that The Stranger was Dominique Godineau, but knowing that Dominique Godineau was The Stranger. It felt like I lost a friend and got a hero in her place.

“You must again excuse me, I’m not used to . . .  having a wound bad enough to bleed,” she said breathlessly, and laughed a little. “Nor anyone to treat it.”

“So I gathered. Um. Maybe we  _should_  get you into some civvies and go to the emergency room. If this closes with glass and metal in it—”

“I’ll be fine.” I looked up to find her watching the tweezers once more. I’d never seen anyone be so interested in their own blood. It was funny, in a disturbing sort of way. “My body will . . . eventually break down whatever foreign objects remain.”

“That sounds painful.”

“It isn’t.”

“Oh.” I was flustered for no reason I could name. My face felt like it was on fire and I accidentally jabbed The Stranger’s wound. She inhaled a little more deeply than usual, but didn’t make a sound—and still with that avid, frying-ants-with-a-magnifying-glass face. It was eerie. “So, do you want me to stop and just bandage it up, then?”

She snorted and looked up at me. Almost smiled again, and some of that eerie look went away. “This way is much more civilized, and much quicker. Please, continue.”

So I did, wondering at this turn of events. At me, patching up this larger-than-life person who had been, and in some ways, different ways, was still the ruin of my life. But I could feel her gaze on me, and it was . . . Dominique. Dominique, bleeding in my bathroom. Dominique, who'd hung around my cubicle for no reason. Dominique, who my coworkers were probably right about, at least a little. Dominique, who had asked me out to dinner. . . .

Dominique’s chilly fingers ghosting briefly across my cheek.

I froze, nearly dropping the tweezers.

“What are you doing?”

“I . . . were you in love with The Stranger?” she asked quietly, her fingers pausing near my mouth before dropping away.

“Once upon a time, yes. But he was kind of a jackass. And so’re you, incidentally.” I jabbed her with the tweezers on purpose this time, and she hissed, but didn’t jerk her hand away. I kept digging out bits of metal and glass, bits of flesh, occasionally swabbing at the blood that welled up. The Stranger didn’t say anything more after that, and removing pieces of beaker went a lot faster.

Finally, I removed a thin sliver of glass with more care than I’d like to admit feeling, and could see some sort of artery—probably the one that was leaking all the blood—seal before my eyes. Goddamn eXtra-Norms.

“Of  _course_  I was in love with him. A mysterious, troubled hero . . . what girl  _wouldn’t_  go gaga over him?” I’d gotten out as much debris as I could, so I mercurochromed the hell out of her palm. (Which was practically already whole. But I figured I should use some of this stuff before it expired or went bad.)

 I was bandaging her hand before I could speak again. “He was smart. And strong, and brave, and . . . he always did what was right. He was so certain of everything, and I had been certain of . . . nothing. Nothing except for the way I’d felt about him. _Of course_ , I . . . fuck, I wanted to  _be_  him. I wanted to stand by him. But he didn’t want that—which was his prerogative. I really couldn’t blame him, could I? Who’d want a bumbling, naïve, powerless fangirl dogging their every step?”

“I’m sorry,” The Stranger—Dominique—whoever she was said again and this time, it  _did_  make me angry.

“Stop saying that! It doesn’t solve anything, doesn’t fix anything, doesn’t make any of it better—just makes me feel  _worse_!” I taped the trailer of bandage down and stood. It was time to start cleaning up and putting away. 

The tweezers went in the sink till I could clean them off properly. The glass and metal and bloody gauze went there, too, till I could flush it. Till my boss got the hell off my crapper, and the hell out of my life. “You think I don’t understand how fucked my life is? Well, I do. But some days, if I’m lucky, I can pretend it isn’t. Pretend that I’m happy, and that the one person I trusted didn’t try to murder me, and hundreds of thousands of other people. Pretend that this whole new person I’ve got  _growing_ _inside_ _me_  is something I planned, or that I’m even remotely qualified to care for—”

“Cassandra,” Dominique said, placing her hand—the bandaged one—on mine, and I stared at my reflection in the mirror on the medicine cabinet. I looked tired and harried, like I was about to cry. I looked like that a lot, these days. So did Dominique, when I saw her, mostly on television or from a distance.

She still looked that way now, as she came to stand behind me, but a little less so. More at peace, or less haunted, or—something. Something I envied, because I couldn’t remember the last time  _I_  had felt it.

Her fingers brushed lightly up my arm, to my shoulder. Her other hand did the same and our eyes met in the mirror. She smiled at me and I was torn between laughter and tears. “What, no inspired words of wisdom to talk me off my bell-tower?”

“Unfortunately not. I doubt anything I could say would make you feel better about any of the issues you’re dealing with. But if you like . . . I can listen. For as long as you want, whenever you want.” She squeezed my shoulders a little. Not hard, but I could feel the strength in her hands. She could literally snap me like a twig, if she wanted. Could shatter and pulverize me as if I was made of wicker and gelatin.

I shivered, and her arms slid around me in a loose embrace, eyes closed, face buried in my hair again. The only other time she’d ever held me was in L’Estraga’s lair—and that only because I was half-unconscious and unable to run. So she’d carried me out. Everything had been echoes, and explosions and tears soaking into The Stranger’s half mask. He— _she_  had been muttering something as she ran, but I hadn’t been able to make it out.

I’d simply known I was safe. The Stranger had me, and I was safe. . . .

I imagined that’d feel pretty good, right about now: that safety and certainty, wrapping me up in a cocoon. It would have been so easy to turn my head, up and to the side. My nose would have brushed her chin and she’d have looked down at me, questioning. I’d hesitate, rehabilitated, responsible girl that I was, but only for a moment, then kiss her lower lip.

Far from pulling away or stopping me, she’d tilt her head closer.

I imagined it’d be nothing like I’d once thought kissing The Stranger might be like. It’d probably be . . . like kissing anybody. The same fizz and tingle (or lack thereof), the same sort of give and take. A dizzying combination of tickle and tease, interspersed with long slow exploration. Neither slobbery, nor dry, and she’d taste like bourbon. The expensive kind that probably costs more per liter than all my monthly utilities combined.

She’d probably taste like kissing Dominique might have. . . .

It was then that I realized I wasn’t just imagining the scent of expensive hooch, I was  _smelling_  it.

“Are you drunk?” I asked, though I didn’t really care. The Stranger turned me around so I was facing her, looking up into her eyes. Her hands were gentle and warm on my upper arms.

“It would take more alcohol than I keep at hand, and more time than I’m willing to invest in drinking to get me that way,” she said, and it sounded like an apology. For not being Human enough, I suppose. “But it does calm my nerves, somewhat.”

“Huh. Feature this: The Stranger, nervous about braving the lair of the infamous Crimson Casey.” That was good for a full smile—a grin, even, with teeth and everything. I could still smell my namesakes blooming in the living-room.

Dominique closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, I could see that— _whatever_  it was in them. The thing I so didn’t need to have to deal with or acknowledge right now. “I’ve been wanting to say something to you for the past year. To come clean about . . .  _everything_. Then after what happened six weeks ago, it seemed like it’d never be the right time to say, ‘ _Hello, I’m actually The Stranger, and maybe we could go out to_ _dinner_ _sometime?’_  Anyway I was sure once I told you the former, you’d say no to the latter.”

“Probably. But thank you for coming clean to me. It means a lot,” I said quietly. Without hesitation, without looking away, because I might have been wrong about what I’d been seeing and sensing, but I didn’t think I was. And I didn’t want to break a superhero’s heart. Especially  _this_  superhero. Not just after finding out she actually _has_ one.

“I’m not—I’m not asking you for anything,  _petite_ , but I promised you no more lies,” she said slowly, as if searching for exactly the right words. And she was the one to look away. At her right hand on my left arm. She seemed determined and tired. “I don’t expect love, or even like, I just  _want_ , so badly. I need. . . .”

This would have been the part where I shut her up by kissing her till she saw stars, and before she started looking haunted and guilty again. Where I’d tell her  _Yes. I need, too._

Then I’d be kissing her again, and letting her kiss me back. I’d slide my arms around her neck and she’d pull me tight against her. It’d be weird not to feel hardness pressing against my stomach, but then,  _all_  of her would be hard. All muscle and armored clothing, and it would feel like I’d never wanted anyone—even The Stranger in “his” heyday—so badly. And—

—her hair would be heavy and soft, just like I’d imagined. Her hands would be everywhere I needed them to be. As if she couldn’t decide which was the more prime real estate: tits or ass. And I’d feel each and every moan through her body armor and that’d be all that mattered. For tonight, anyway, because I didn’t know if it was some slutty stage of my grief or if those pregnancy hormones were making me so damn horny, but I suddenly  _wanted_ her. Dominique, The Stranger, and any other Alter-Egos floating around in that pile of muscle, armor, and borderline personality disorder. I wanted _her_  with everything in me, and that was all that mattered. . . .

I blinked at my not-terribly-distant living room window. It was closed, and I hadn’t closed it.

I was alone in my bathroom, my fantasy still soft on my lips, urgent on my body, and molten and sweet in places deep and low down. Who knew how long I’d been standing there wishing for the impossible?

Had The Stranger—Dominique— _The Stranger_ realized what I was wool-gathering about? Had she left in order to spare me the embarrassment of her knowledge?

Mortified, suddenly all I wanted was to reintroduce my tired body to my bed and try to pretend this strange new-old feeling wasn’t happening to me. But instead, I opened my medicine cabinet and started shoving gauze away with choppy motions and shaking hands. I kept knocking things over or into the sink, and finally I slammed the cabinet door shut hard enough that the mirror on the front cracked.

My reflection was riven in two, one glittering line drawn down the center of me.

“God, we are  _so_  fucking damaged,” I whispered to the empty space between the woman staring out of my mirror and myself—to the empty spaces  _within_  us. There were many.

Looking away from the woman’s dark, wounded eyes, I left the rest of the mess for the morning and dragged myself to bed. Sleep was a  _long_  time coming.

**Author's Note:**

> Lemme know what you think. And suggestions :-)
> 
> Join me on [Tumblr](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com)!


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